The new movie People We Meet On Vacation was released onto Netflix on January 9. The film directed by Brett Haley falls under romance and comedy genres. The film was based off of a series of romantic novels written by Emily Henry. The books consisted of Beach Read (2020), Book Lovers (2022), Happy Place (2023), and Funny Story (2024). The series of books were based on the hit 80s movie, When Harry Met Sally.
In the film there are two main characters Poppy and Alex. Those two are polar-opposite best friends who meet through a friend setting them up to car pool together. They then became close enough that every summer for over a decade they had an annual summer getaway that lasted for a week.
Despite living in different cities they both still made the equal effort to plan the trips to see each other once a year and maintain their loving platonic friendship. However they had a strange falling out which caused them to not go on the trips anymore for the next two years. Once two years had passed they unexpectedly reunited in a wedding in Barcelona. They were forced to talk things out and realized that their so-called platonic relationship was more than that.
WMC sophomore, Caroline Haas found the movie to be interesting and entertaining, and although she thought the movie was good, she said she recommends the original movie over the new one. “I feel like I would never recommend the spinoff” Haas stated. She felt that the film was “one of those, like, predictable rom-coms because it’s been redone so many times.”
Haas felt that the theme of the movie was to “be aware of your ambitions.” In the movie it seemed like the two characters had chemistry just never the chance to explore it due to living conditions and barely able to see each other. While the two of them were on the trips they mostly were never single at the same time until the wedding. One of Haas’ favorite scenes was the wedding scene when the two of them knew they liked each other but had one of their first breakups. They got into a fight and both left without saying bye.
WMC sophomore, Stevie Albora has also watched this movie. Albora thought that this movie was a recommendable movie to people. She enjoyed the movie and thought that it was interesting and entertaining to watch a friendship turn into a relationship over the span of 12 years. Albora thinks that the vacation setting adds more of a romantic vibe to the movie. Her favorite character from the movie was Poppy. She thinks Poppy is “spontaneous and adventurous.” Her favorite scene was the scene at the end of the movie. “She hates running but she’s chasing after Alex for a very long time because she was trying to catch up to him but he didn’t even notice her because he had earbuds in”Albora said. She then later said that she liked the scene because she thought it was a cute scene.
Fans look forward to future books from Emily Henry, and any potential movie adaptations.
